


Threnody

by inlovewithnight



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Background Slash, Backstory, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-21
Updated: 2013-08-21
Packaged: 2017-12-24 04:19:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/935251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako and Stacker, before. Mako and Raleigh, after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Threnody

1\. _drift_

For the first few years, Mako slept on a cot in Stacker's quarters at whichever base he was assigned to. Her world was the orbit of Shatterdome walls and the contents of her footlocker, just like his, holding her clothes and the little things she accumulated over time--books, a handful of seldom-touched toys, souvenirs of places and pilots. (Never friends; Jaeger pilots were gods, not friends.)

In the very beginning she would climb into his bunk with him to cry and shake and then fall asleep against the warmth of his body. When she told him she wanted to be a pilot and that he should be her teacher, she put an end to that herself. There were borders between sensei and student. Lines of respect.

He would still see her cry, and often, but she would not beg for comfort.

He worked hard, coordinating the war, fighting the world government alliance as much as the Kaiju. He cursed and wept and ached. He was mortal.

She never quite believed that.

 

2\. 

They wanted to build a monument.

"You treated us like garbage," Mako tells the screens showing the faces of the world leaders all so far away, behind the half-finished, useless walls that they loved so much. "No one builds monuments to garbage."

"Miss Mori--"

"Rebuild the cities. Help the people. That is what they would have wanted."

"Miss Mori, we want to honor you and Mr. Becket."

"But we are alive." She blinks at the screens, her vision painfully clear. Her eyes are dry. She hasn't cried since she opened Raleigh's escape pod. "Living garbage."

"Miss--"

"Help your people," she repeats. "Honor the dead."

 

3\. _drift_

A year after the Tokyo attack, they moved to Australia, to the new Shatterdome in Sydney. Mako was still young, still afraid, still awed by the pilots and the Jaegers. The lines blurred in her mind, between the people and the robots, the robots and the Kaiju, the monsters and the gods. She had nightmares about mechanical horrors rising from the ocean, beasts with fangs defending cities, giants in sleek piloting gear smashing buildings to the ground.

Stacker watched her and said nothing, though he was always there when she woke up from a nightmare. He gave her water and spoke softly in his careful Japanese, his accent making her smile despite her tears.

One morning he told her to wash her face and hands and dress in her favorite clothes, the jacket and trousers that faintly mimicked the lines of a pilot uniform. He took her hand and led her through the Shatterdome to where Cobra Wildfire was standing in its bay. "Be brave, my girl," he said when her hand tightened in his. "I want you to meet someone."

Hercules Hansen wasn't as tall as Stacker, but he was in his flight suit, and he glowed. His hand brushed against Stacker's as he knelt to look her in the eye. "Hello, Miss Mori. I've heard a lot about you."

"Hello," she whispered.

"Would you like to come inside Cobra and take a look around?"

She did, and she didn't. But she was brave.

 

4\. 

She and Raleigh both have nowhere to go. Hong Kong is devastated, and while they are greeted with cheers and celebration whenever they're seen, she can't forget that it was a twitch of her hand that destroyed that building, or a slight misstep that crushed those cars.

It's too much. Too difficult to be there. They can go anywhere in the world.

He asks her if she'd like to go to Alaska, and she says, "Yes, but only for a little while."

 

5\. _drift_

Mako requested her own quarters when they had been in Australia for nine months.

"Of course," Stacker said, looking up from his paperwork. Startled, but not surprised, she thought; it was easy for her to read his face, by then. "You're old enough to want your privacy, I understand."

"It's not privacy for me, sensei, it's for you."

His eyebrow rose and he placed the papers down carefully. "Oh?"

She returned the expression, folding her hands carefully behind her back. "Perhaps you would like to have time with Mr. Hansen here as well as in his quarters."

"And who's put that idea in your head?"

Still startled, but not surprised. She was doing well. "You come back with dog hair on your uniform. You wouldn't allow that to happen if you were-- ah." She ran into a trap, a corner of words that she could not bring herself to say. "If you were in a position to notice that they were being shed on."

She could not see if Stacker blushed, but he cleared his throat, a rough hitch of sound. "You're too clever for your own good."

"Yes, sensei."

He was quiet for a moment. "At any other time in history, I think I would be expected to tell you to be careful, to be good, to not go off with any boys or girls who caught your fancy until you're a bit older. But this isn't any other time in history, and who knows if you have the time to waste?"

"I... don't understand."

"Never mind." He turned onto his side, pushing the papers away and resting his hand over his eyes. "I'll be sure you have your own quarters. You'll understand when you have something to understand about. And I hope you find joy in it, my girl. That's what I want for you."

 

6\. 

They wander the world, visiting each of the Jaeger bases and Shatterdomes that stand vacant and crumbling at the edges now. They honor the ghosts in those ruins with silence.

Mako doesn't tell Raleigh about the pilots and crew and scientists she knew from each of the stops on their pilgrimage. She thinks he must know, the way she knows about others before her time, ones he must have met and loved/hated/respected/lost in his first days of piloting.

They don't drift. They don't dream each other's dreams. But they are ghosts inside each other, and always will be.

 

7\. _drift_

Stacker told her that he was sick in his stoic and unwavering way, his gaze holding hers steadily enough that she couldn't look away, or blink, or breathe.

"Radiation." He said it slowly, then again, and she kept silent, biting her tongue on a sharp, _I know the word, sensei._

He was quiet for a moment. "We're such fragile things."

"That's why we needed the Jaegers," she said. "What good are they if they kill us, too?"

"A philosopher _and_ an engineer," he replied drily, and she knew the moment of vulnerability was over. Now they would both be strong. "And you want to be a pilot, too. I'm not surprised in the least, Miss Mori."

 

8\. 

The consequences begin to become apparent only weeks after the Breach is closed.

The sea life around Hong Kong dies off almost immediately. Three Jaegers dying in those waters, so close together, and five Kaiju on top of that. The water almost glows with ill-health and worse memories. There is no way to keep the currents from carrying it around the world.

"We may see rapid and unpredictable mutations in the coming years," scientists warn. Mako turns her eyes and ears from the news, but the words find their way into her heart. They're inescapable, the warnings and the fear. "We may have sowed seeds we're not prepared to reap."

_What was the other choice?_ Mako thinks. Her chest aches, and her throat. Her mind. Her heart.

_What good are these things, what good are our sacrifices, if they kill us, too?_

Raleigh is there, close. His hand moves in time with herds to find each other. It's enough.

 

9\. _drift_

"Will you drift with me?" she asked Stacker, in the precious handful of hours between chaos of her making and the near-end of it all.

"No, Mako."

"You're stronger. You're steady. I know I can guide myself from you."

"No."

She can hear the frustration lacing her own voice. "You say you don't carry anything with you into the drift. That means there's nothing that could hurt me."

His hand brushed against her cheek, warm and dry, his skin what her skin knows as comfort. "I carry nothing for anyone else, my girl, because I give it all to you."

 

10.

A year after the end of the war, they reunite in Australia. Everyone from the Shatterdome at the end--crews, Tendo and his staff, the scientists. Mako and Raleigh, back from their travels. Herc Hansen.

There's a ceremony that goes on far too long, and a dinner. A feast, like they're gods from long ago.

Afterward, Herc and Mako and Raleigh step away together, into an empty hallway. Their request for the equipment was denied. Things are different now, only a year later. Things that used to be trash are now priceless and being remade into the next steps of wonder and horror.

They join their hands, bow their heads, and remember. They let themselves drift.


End file.
